Beijing - A court in north-eastern China Thursday said it had executed two men convicted of leading a gang which smuggled heroin from Myanmar, state media reported.

Liu Fuying and Sun Yulong were convicted in China's Liaoning province last August of trafficking more than 8 kilograms of heroin on several trips from Myanmar since
2002, the official Xinhua news agency quoted court officials as saying.

The two men were executed last month after the Supreme People's Court approved the death sentences against them, the agency said.

It quoted court official Wu Yanjun as saying drug trafficking by "more and more professional" gangs was increasing in north-eastern China, including the smuggling of drugs from China to North and South Korea.

Liaoning courts handled 1,054 drug-related cases involving 1,797 people over the past 12 months, up 60 per cent year-on-year, the agency said.

The report of the two executions came one day before the UN-sponsored international anti-drugs day on Friday, around which many Chinese cities and provinces normally announce drug-related sentences.

China keeps the number of executions a state secret, but the US-based Dui Hua Foundation has estimated that at least 5,000 people have been executed annually in recent years, more than in the rest of the world put together.

China has limited the use of death sentences in recent years but retains it for 68 offences, including drug trafficking, serious corruption and other non-violent crimes.

Legal analysts put China's annual number of executions at more than 10,000 annually before 1997, when it abolished capital punishment for theft. (dpa)